


Two Paths

by LeBibish



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Heroine's Journey, Post-Canon, could be agnieszka/kasia if you want to read it that way, fairy-tale medieval kingdoms, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:59:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeBibish/pseuds/LeBibish
Summary: Two paths diverged in a yellow wood…and two dear friends found themselves walking in different directions. When you know someone to the very bottom of their soul, does it really matter how far apart you are?





	1. Two Paths Diverged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dasyatidae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/gifts).



> Merry Yuletide, dasyatidae, thank you for a very inspiring prompt! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Kasia uses familiar names most of the time when she thinks about people, ie Nieshka, Stashek and Marisha. However, in formal situations or where the narration reflects a broader point of view, formal names are used (Agnieszka, Kasimir and Regelinda Maria). I tried to make the shifts obvious in the text.

Kasia doesn’t ever return to the Valley. That was her Story, the one everyone had always known: the girls taken by the Dragon never came back and Kasia had always been meant to be the one taken.

 

Kasia never returns and Agnieszka never leaves. That was always Agnieszka’s Story: the girl who was never meant to leave, who would grow old in the Valley she loved, in the shadow of the Dragon’s Tower. The witch of the woods, living in a tiny cottage in the dark forest, full of magic.

 

For many years, Kasia’s Story is a favorite in the Valley. Children listen with awe to the story of the maiden who was taken by the Wood and stolen back again by the Forest Witch and her Dragon. The stalwart heroine who became a King’s Champion—the local girl who climbed the tallest trees and braved the coldest winter to bring help to the village and who grew up to be a knight in golden armor. In the Valley, it takes a generation for the stories to diverge and the maiden and the hero to become two different characters. Outside the Valley, it happens faster.

 

Stories, as troubadours sing them and storytellers weave them, often tell Truths, but they rarely tell what actually happened. As much as Kasia and Agnieszka had always been part of a grand Story, their lives and choices were also their own.

 

Kasia does return and Agnieszka does leave, though only for short periods of time. They visit each other because they can’t bear to live where the other chooses to be. Kasia knows that Agnieszka feels stifled and strangled every moment she spends inside a city. Agnieszka knows that Kasia cannot sleep through the night within the remembered shadow of the Wood. Still, they visit each other as often as they can, because they love each other and miss each other’s company.

 

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It was a long and winding road from Olshanka to Gidna, passing through the mountains around the valley and down the hills to the seaside.

 

When the girls had fled the capital with the young Prince and Princess, they had traveled as fast as Nieshka’s magic could take them, terrified and desperate and carrying nothing with them. Traveling away from the ruins of the Tower, Kasia and the children rode in a wagon loaded with supplies, without the panic of desperation, and accompanied by battle-weary soldiers.

 

Kasia didn’t dare sleep along the journey. No one knew what was happening in the Wood behind them. They had left Nieshka and the Dragon to make their own way into the heart of the magic. If there was anyone in the world that Kasia believed could stop the Wood’s evil, it was Nieshka. But she wasn’t sure there was anyone in the world who could stop the Wood.

 

Part of her wanted desperately to turn around, to find Nieshka, to join the fight. However, she had promised the children that she would take them to their mother’s family. If it took all her unnatural strength and more besides, she would keep that promise. She would get them to Gidna and then they would all face what was coming next. Whatever it was.

 

Kasia was not the only one watching the road behind them warily or flinching every time they passed a copse of trees. The soldiers, confused and frightened, were as tense as a bow strung and ready for battle.

 

Fear of what might be behind them was also not the only thing keeping Kasia from sleep. She didn’t entirely trust the Falcon not to turn the wagons towards the capital the moment she wasn’t paying attention. Awake, she thought she had a chance to evade any attempts he might make to bind her. He was as exhausted as any of the soldiers and his magic was weak and fragile feeling.

 

Kasia had very carefully not told anyone that she could feel magic in people since the Wood had left her, but she had kept track of what she felt and who from. She thought those were both probably good habits to keep up especially around the Falcon, who had so recently been fighting against Nieshka and her.

 

If the Falcon didn’t keep the promise he had made to help escort the Prince and Princess to their grandparents, Kasia would find another way. She had been utterly serious about carrying them there herself if she had to. They were too young to have seen so much and lost as much as they had. She wouldn’t let the sorcerer’s ambitions take away their chance to feel safe.

 

In Kasia’s lap, Marisha whimpered. The little girl had fallen asleep as the wagon rumbled along the road. She fisted her hand in Kasia’s skirt, tugging at the worn fabric.

 

“Mama,” she cried softly.

 

Kasia looked at Stashek, leaning against a sack of grain and hugging his knees to his chest. She put her arm around his shoulders and tugged him closer to her and Marisha. The young boy leaned into her but refused to look up. “Marisha’s scared.”

 

“I know. She’ll be alright though.”

 

“Kasia, do you think we will reach Gidna? Nothing will….will stop us?”

 

Kasia lay her cheek against his head. “I promise, Stashek. I promise I’ll get you to your family. I won’t let anything hurt you or Marisha.” He shook slightly, but didn’t say anything more.

 

Marisha whimpered again.

 

They stopped for the night in an open field along the road. The soldiers built a fire near the wagon and set up a guard shift. They ate quickly, glancing distrustfully out into the growing dark. The Falcon set a spell that would warn them if anything larger than a fox came close to the camp. His magic was showy and ostentatious and many of the soldiers visibly relaxed as he explained its purpose.

 

He did not tell them how little magic he had left. Kasia wondered if it was pride or caution that led to his decision. Nieshka didn’t like him much, she knew, but the Dragon had been willing to trust him. And Kasia had seen him fighting in the Wood—one of a handful of people who had ever survived the Wood. She would watch him to make sure he was taking care of himself and not wasting his strength. They might need him.

 

The soldiers were happy to have him present and happier, she was sure, not to know that he was reaching the end of his strength. They listened to him as if he was their commanding officer. Kasia had an uncomfortable feeling that they might not be as willing to tolerate her presence without his support. Certainly, she had caught several sideways glances towards her throughout the day. From the Baron’s men, who had fought the Wood Queen and seen their leader and most of their fellows slaughtered mercilessly, the looks were wary. From Marek’s men, who had been told that traitors and corrupted sorcerers had kidnapped the prince and princess and then seen the Wood Queen slaughter everyone in her way, the looks had a bit more hostility to them.

 

Kasia didn’t sleep on the road from Olshanka to Gidna.

 

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After a night of jumping at every bit of wind rustling through the bushes, everyone was ready to leave as soon as the first light of dawn let them see the dirt and rocks of the road.

 

One of the soldiers came up to rummage through the wagon’s supplies for a morning meal suitable for travel. Under his battered helmet, Kasia could see greasy strands of straw-colored hair. He reminded her of her second oldest brother, who worked with the village blacksmith.

 

She kept one arm wrapped around the children in her lap and the other on the hilt of the sword Nieshka had made for her. Familiar did not mean safe, as any child of the Valley knew.

 

Surprising her, the soldier’s wary gaze turned a bit warmer and he nodded approvingly at her protective gesture. He silently handed her a bit of the bread and cheese he was gathering before clambering off the wagon to hand out some food to the rest of the company.

 

Kasia didn’t wake the children up immediately but let them sleep as long as they could. It had been a restless night and bread and cheese would keep.

 

The soldiers moved swiftly breaking down the makeshift camp and the sun was barely over the horizon when they started out again. The creaking of the wagon woke Stashek first, then Marisha. The two children took the food from Kasia quietly and ate almost mechanically.

 

They had better manners than any child Kasia had known before but they were still children and she had expected the possibility of tears or tantrums. She wasn’t sure if they didn’t appear because the children were still too frightened and insecure to react or if it was because they were exhausted to the point of stupefaction.

 

Kasia wondered how much her own exhaustion was dulling her senses and judgment.

 

She had thought that she would know what happened with the Wood. That the connection she felt to Nieshka since they had seen into each other’s souls would tell her when something changed. That the strangeness of her body and her ability to sense magic would have reacted to the Wood’s triumph or defeat. That the world would feel different somehow.

 

Instead, it was days after everything ended before she learned that the world had indeed changed.

 

Nearly at the end of their strength, a company of soldiers, a single sorcerer, a peasant girl who shone with an unnatural beauty, and two very young royal heirs staggered out of the mountains covered in dust and grime. Although they had spent most of the journey avoiding other people, apprehensive about possible corruption from the Wood, the Falcon insisted they stop in a village before they entered the City-State of Gidna. The sorcerer had invited Kasia to call him Solya during the journey, but she was finding it difficult to think of him without the title, especially at moments like this.

 

He charmed some of the villagers into providing baths for the children and soldiers and then used his magic to alter their clothes. Even the soldiers’ armor was made shining and new. Kasia could feel how much it exhausted the wizard and his barely-recovering magic and she wondered out loud if they could afford to waste his strength on mere vanity.

 

The Falcon threw her a considering look and Kasia tried not to visibly flinch. She did not want him to wonder how she knew that he was as tired as he was. The man put on a very good façade.

 

Instead of pursuing the matter, he turned to his attention to convincing Stashek to ride one of the horses himself instead of riding in the wagon with Kasia. He tried to persuade Marisha, as well, but the young girl absolutely refused to let go of her protector and the Falcon was apparently as cautious of a possibly devastating tantrum from the child as Kasia was. In the spirit of compromise, Kasia sat in the front of the wagon with the driver, the princess sitting tall in her lap and wearing a far more elaborate costume than Kasia would have thought a child could manage.

 

As it turned out, Kasia was grateful for the sorcerer’s understanding of grandeur. Riding into the city behind Prince Kasimir Stansislav Algirdon, carrying Princess Regelinda Maria Algirdon, and surrounded by shining well-armed soldiers was a very different Story than entering a city with a ragged Stashek and Marisha and a tiny group of survivors. Even so, their entrance was almost as chaotic as the entrance into Kralia had been when Prince Marek brought back the long-lost Queen from the depths of the Wood.

 

The children’s grandparents, the Count and Countess of Gidna, greeted them formally as befitted the Heir to a Kingdom and his retinue. Kasia felt as if she were in an actor’s troupe and had forgotten her lines. The Falcon, on the other hand, negotiated the performance like he was the troupe’s leader.

 

After the pageantry and parade were over, Kasia expected to be shown to a room. Stashek and Marisha might be a prince and princess but they were also children who had been through a very, very long ordeal. They needed better sleep, better food, and a safe place to break down and cry.

 

Instead, they were shown to a private meeting chamber where a messenger was waiting.

 

The Countess had tried to take Marisha away from Kasia, but the young girl screamed, wrapped her chubby little arms around Kasia’s neck in a grip like iron, and refused to let go. Kasia was rather grateful that her flesh was made of stronger stuff now because she was sure Marisha would be choking her otherwise.

 

Stashek grabbed her hand as well, making his own position clear.

 

Both the Count and the Countess frowned heavily. “Perhaps this…young woman…should wait outside, Kasimir.”

 

The prince shook his head and spoke firmly. “This is Kasia. She has protected us the whole time and I won’t leave her. Marisha either.”

 

His young face was very solemn and his voice turned quiet but steady as he told his mother’s parents, “She tried to save Mama, too.”

 

There were no more arguments about Kasia accompanying the Royal Party. At least, on that day.

 

Gidna’s castle was not as impressive as Kralia’s brick palace had been to Kasia, but the room they were shown into was still one of the more opulent rooms she had ever even imagined. Vibrant tapestries hung from the ceilings and the benches along the wall were lined with thick, inviting cushions.

 

Slumped into some of those cushions was Alosha, the Sword. Her dark skin was grey with exhaustion and the burns covering her body were painful even to look at. Considering Kasia had been sure the sorceress was dead when they had left her behind in the capital, she looked amazingly well. Kasia doubted the woman could even stand at the moment and had no idea how she had managed to make it to Gidna.

 

It was several seconds before Kasia realized there was a man standing beside the injured woman, wearing the uniform of a royal messenger.

 

The messenger was from Kralia. The message was from the Dragon.

 

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It was a long time before Kasia learned the entire story of how the Wood was defeated. It was not a tale that could be entrusted to letters and Nieshka was as busy with her work in the Valley as Kasia was in Gidna.

 

Everyone knew the basic story though. The Dragon, the most powerful sorcerer in the Kingdom, and his student, the sorceress Agnieszka, had saved the newly orphaned Prince Kasimir and Princess Regelinda Maria from the evil created by the Wood. It depended on the storyteller whether the evil was corrupted guardsmen, corrupted mercenaries, or simply monsters. With the valiant Prince Marek guarding their retreat--Kasia protested at this point in the story that the thousands of deaths in that terrible fight shouldn’t be considered additions to Marek’s glory, but Solya was insistent that trying to paint Marek as a villain would tear the Kingdom apart and that no one would ever be willing to accept that he was a dupe of the Queen who wasn’t really the Queen but a manifestation of the Wood. It was simply too much.

 

With the valiant Prince Marek guarding their retreat, the two sorcerers took the two royal heirs to a magically defended Tower and then entered the Wood and destroyed the evil that lived there. Most people seemed perfectly happy to accept a vague explanation of ‘destroyed’ and ‘evil’ without any clarification of what the Wood really was or how it had been defeated. They seemed much more interested in the parts of the story that glorified Prince Marek and the battle—it was rarely specified who the battle was against and the none of the storytellers ever mentioned that it was actually a battle of Polynan soldiers against other Polynan soldiers. People also seemed fascinated by the parts that romanticized the ‘barefoot peasant sorceress’ and the ‘sophisticated Court sorcerer’ meeting as student and mentor.

 

Kasia grudgingly had to admit that the stories weren’t entirely awful and Nieshka was almost as wild and innocent as the bards made her sound.

 

It didn’t take long before the stories also included Kasia herself, as the mysterious warrior who protected the prince and princess in the Tower. Kasia saw Stashek nod conspiratorially at Solya the first time her part in the Story came up in one of the songs sung over supper. She decided to leave the story-telling to others and concentrated on learning to navigate the Court—both the court of the Count and Countess of Gidna and much of the Court of Kralia were crammed together in the castle and it took all of Kasia’s attention to figure out how to dress and walk and speak so that no one questioned her presence at the prince and princess’s side.

 

Neither Stashek nor Marisha were willing to let Kasia be anywhere else. Thankfully, Alosha appeared to be an acceptable substitute or Kasia wouldn’t ever be able to leave the children’s eyesight. At least for the first few months, Marisha wouldn’t allow even her grandparents to hold her without one of the two women present. Considering that both of them had fought the corrupted guards that attacked the children and their mother, the Count and Countess grudgingly accepted the situation.

 

That fight had created a bond of sorts between the ageless sorceress and the no longer entirely human young woman. Or perhaps it was being the only two people who could soothe the screaming nightmares of the young King and his sister. In spite of the fact that Alosha had once been one of the strongest voices pushing for Kasia’s execution, the two women came to trust each other. Truthfully, even though she knew it would have hurt Nieshka dreadfully, Kasia wasn’t sure the woman hadn’t been right. The Wood Queen might have been destroyed in the end, but she had been responsible for an impossible number of deaths first. And if Rosya thought that the country was weakened enough to attack, thousands more deaths might yet be laid at her feet.

 

Kasia understood Alosha the Sword and her motivations. Solya the Falcon took a longer time for Kasia to understand. She was surprised when he supported the King in naming Kasia his champion in his coronation tournament. It wasn’t until she heard the stories and songs shift so that the golden, unstoppable Wood Queen destroying Polyna’s army had been replaced with a golden, unstoppable Kasia destroying their enemies that she realized some of the Falcon’s purpose.  More of his plots were clear in the reactions of the Rosyan knights, who had scoffed and sneered when they learned who they were expected to fight.

 

After she knocked them down repeatedly on the tournament field, several of the knights began to acknowledge her with respectful manner. Others treated her warily but without the arrogant contempt that had marked their attitudes before the tourney. Two of the men still sneered, with a deeply vicious anger in their clenched fists and narrowed eyes, but they were hushed by their companions. And not long after the tournament, the Rosyan delegation finally agreed to sign a renewed peace treaty.

 

Kasia decided that she should treat Solya with true respect after all. His plotting had done a great deal of good for the Kingdom.

 

She changed her mind again when Solya asked her to marry him and then promptly spread rumors of her refusal around the city. Alosha laughed herself sick over it all. Solya, Kasia decided, was a man she could only trust to always be himself. She thought he would likely remain loyal to King Kasimir though. He seemed to genuinely mourn Marek and respect the royal family of Polyna.

 

Alosha approved although she also tended to treat Solya as a student who wasn’t quite living up to his potential. The woman was still recovering from her injuries though she pushed herself hard. Kasia had wondered if she wouldn’t be going back to Kralia to help the Dragon clear out the remnants of the Wood’s corruption but she seemed content to stay in Gidna for a time. She said it was because she would heal faster by the ocean and she dutifully took daily baths in the sea under the advice of several healers. Watching her patiently help Marisha float on the waves and practice kicking, her hands gentle and her eyes soft even as her voice remained stern, Kasia thought there was rather more to it.

 

Several nights after King Kasimir managed to convince his grandfather to accept his appointment of Kasia as the Captain of his Guards and had even gotten the approval of some of the nobles on the Magnati, Alosha and Kasia sat together on a bed with Stashek and Marisha sleeping fitfully between them.

 

Although the children had separate chambers, it wasn’t unusual for all four to start the night in the same bed. Except for when Stashek felt a need to prove his independence and maturity, he and Marisha generally insisted Kasia and Alosha be there when they went to sleep. Considering how often they had nightmares, Kasia found it handy to be in the same room to soothe them back to sleep anyway.

 

Nieshka had sent some water from the Spindle in a casket that seemed like it had grown straight from a tree instead of being carved by human hands. When the children drank the water, it seemed to stop the nightmares from occurring. But Alosha didn’t like to let the children become dependent on it and Kasia was willing to save it for times when the nightmares were truly awful and they needed extra sleep.

 

The women would stay awake during the early hours of the night, guarding the sleep of the two hard-treated children. Kasia found that she needed less sleep than she had before her own misadventure with the Wood and the magic spun by Nieshka and the Dragon. Alosha mostly seemed to manage by sleeping late in the mornings and being so gruff and stern that no one dared wake her before she wished to rise.

 

Over the sleeping children, Alosha quietly shared with Kasia what she knew of the end of the Wood. The Dragon—Sarkan—had shared something of the story with her, she said. Kasia expected she had actually interrogated him ruthlessly because the sorceress appeared mostly satisfied that the Wood wouldn’t cause any more problems. That Nieshka had somehow conquered it.

 

“We must remember that the Wood is not the only source of evil in the world though,” Alosha glanced down at Stashek. “I would like to see the line of good Kings in Polyna continue.”

 

Kasia, Captain of the Royal Guard and comforter of the King’s nightmares, knew she was part of helping that desire come true. She knew she wanted to be part of making it true. Anything that wanted to hurt these children would have to come through her.

 

She had wondered if the strangeness of her body—the stiffness and strength and shine—would fade over time, but over the last few months she seemed to have only gotten stronger.

  

“How do you stand it?” Kasia asked suddenly.

 

Alosha, with Marisha cuddled up against her hip, had been examining Kasia’s sword. She had begun eyeing it after the tournament, but hadn’t commented on it yet. She responded distractedly, “What do you mean?”

 

“Being so different. Outliving everyone. All of it.” Marisha had already outgrown the clothes they had borrowed for her in Olshanka. And Kasia had defeated knights with years of experience and the best arms available with nothing but her own unnatural strength and a sword magicked up by a brand-new sorceress out of random bits of metal handy on the road. They had barely even managed to scratch her with their swords and her blood had oozed out sluggish and thick, like sap from a tree.

 

Alosha looked up briefly but turned back to the sword. This wasn’t a conversation to have face to face. “You learn to think on a different scale. To enjoy people in the time you have with them, knowing that it’s always going to be short. You do what you can and if you are very lucky, you find some people who might live as long as you do and that you can stand to be around that long.”

 

Kasia remembered Nieshka telling her that Alosha’s grand-children had grand-children. She wondered what it was like to see children you loved and raised grow old and die. She wasn’t sure Alosha had actually answered her question.

 

A week later, Alosha handed Kasia a new sword made by the Sword’s own hands. Kasia could feel magic running through it; she thought it might be meant to make the metal stronger. To make the sword as sturdy and strong as its wielder. Kasia packed Nieshka’s improvised sword away with a few of her other prized belongings—letters from Nieshka and her family, a cloth doll her oldest sister had sent her, and a handkerchief that Marisha had clumsily stitched with a mess of tangled threads meant to be daisies “…because they are so pretty and so are you, Kasia.”

 

She wore Alosha’s sword at her side as the Court-in-exile left Gidna and finally rode back into Kralia.

 

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Entering Kralia for the second time, Kasia couldn’t help but think of the differences that a single year had made. Stashek had left as an orphaned prince fleeing magic corruption and his own uncle’s ambition and fantasies. He returned as King Kasimir with his grandfather at his side as Regent. Kasia had been a prisoner, collared and distrusted, and stared at with equal parts fear and wonder. Now she was the Captain of the Guard and the stares held more awe and respect and resentment. Now, the crowd knew her name.

 

Alosha rode behind her, alongside the no longer quite so little Princess Regelinda Maria. The princess rode a pony, still not grown enough for her own horse. Alosha was subtly and strategically keeping her mare just close enough to the princess’s pony that she could steady the child if she fell. Alosha and Kasia were the only ones who called the King and princess Stashek and Marisha anymore.

 

Despite being well-known and respected in the capital, Alosha garnered far more fearful looks than Kasia did. Kasia’s strange, magical transformation made her unnaturally beautiful. Alosha’s burn scars were faded as if they were decades old thanks to the magic of the most powerful healers in the Kingdom but they were still badges of violence and terror. Where Kasia’s skin shone with the warmth of polished wood, parts of Alosha’s shone with the cold light of metal for the armor that had melted into her skin had been affected by her magic and had become living parts of her body.

 

In Gidna, the metal scars had only enhanced her reputation as the Sword, the sorceress who had perfected crafting enchanted weapons and armor for Polyna’s army. Kasia thought things would be the same in Kralia but it would, apparently, take some time before people were used to the changes. Perhaps it was harder for the people of Kralia since they had been more directly touched by the horrors of the Wood and the way it could twist and turn familiar faces into terrible monsters.

 

Greater than any of these differences though, what stood out most to Kasia about this return to Kralia was the absence of Nieshka. Although they had often been separated in the capital, they had had the comfort of knowing the other was near and of being able to find each other to share in the strangeness of the city. As children, the girls had been inseparable; as the year of the Dragon’s choice approached and everyone else had distanced themselves more and more from Kasia—even, if not especially—her family, Nieshka had only clung to her harder. Now, for more than a year, they had been able to speak only through letters delivered by the occasional messenger riding from the city by the sea to the distant Valley.

 

In Gidna, Kasia had missed Nieshka, had wanted to share everything she learned and saw with her. Entering Kralia, it was like the wound of her absence was brand new—this was a place she had never been without Nieshka. She wondered if the year had changed Nieshka as much as it had changed Kasia.

 

For a moment, Kasia felt entirely alone.

 

Then her horse paused as the parade slowed in front of the palace. The hilt of Alosha’s sword shifted to press into her side and Stashek twisted in his saddle to send her a grin. Kasia smiled back and nodded towards Solya’s rolling eyes and half-amused exasperation. He had been teaching Stashek the art of a grand entrance. The young King straightened around, the picture of innocent dignity.

 

It wasn’t until after most of the ceremony (involving holy relics and a host of priests welcoming the King back to his capital) was over that Kasia realized Stashek’s grin hadn’t been simply high spirits.

 

Among the Court witches and wizards bowing to the King stood Nieshka. Agnieszka, properly, as she stood in a beautiful but stiff dress and gracefully acknowledged the Royal family. Kasia wondered if she had magicked the dress up just before they arrived or if she had finally learned how to not rip her clothes and tangle her hair within moments of stepping outside. Was she still Nieshka or had she grown into being only Agnieszka, a royal witch of Polyna?

 

Hours later, hand in hand with a sorceress whose beautiful dress had somehow lost half its jeweled netting and gained an entirely mysterious stain on one shoulder, Kasia laughingly acknowledged that Nieshka was Nieshka and would probably always be.

 

It was a pleasantly temperate summer even in the crowded streets of Kralia. Nieshka enjoyed being with Kasia but clearly did not enjoy the city. The first time they had been in Kralia, her judgement had been entirely colored by the dangling threat of execution hanging over Kasia’s head and her own impatience to gather the soldiers needed by the Dragon to take the Valley back from the Wood. During this visit, without that sense of impending doom, Nieshka was clear-headed enough that everyone could tell that she truly disliked the Court and the people there and even the city itself.

 

She snapped at Solya who obligingly turned into his most arrogant and sly self, matching her temper with the worst parts of his own personality. She hated the clothing she had to wear to garner respect and the servants hated the messes that trailed behind her. She soon managed to deeply offend several nobles, only half of whom enjoyed being offended.

 

She watched Kasia practicing sword fighting with the guards, watched her knock them flat, and Kasia could see reflected in her eyes that terrible battle with the Queen. She listened to the resentment some of the guards felt for their new Captain (some of the same resentment several witches and wizards clearly felt for Agnieszka) and Kasia could see that she regretted not being able to return Kasia to normal. She regretted that Kasia was stronger and hardier and better able to fight than she ever would have been before.

 

When they were younger but already knew the likely paths of their Stories, Kasia had imagined traveling over Polyna as a troubadour and learning all the songs that existed. She had never said it out loud but at the time she had imagined Nieshka traveling with her. Nieshka had dreamed out loud however—that Kasia came back to the valley once a year to share her songs, in spite of the fact that none of the Dragon’s girls ever returned.

 

It hurt, a little, then, to realize that Nieshka never thought of coming with her. It hurt, a little, now, to know for sure that Nieshka never would. Not for longer than a visit every few years anyway.

 

Kasia would have to take Alosha’s advice it seemed. She would have to learn to enjoy the time she had with Nieshka and not mourn the time she didn’t.

 

So Kasia focused on enjoying the summer; the warmth of Nieshka’s hands and the welcoming strength of her embrace. She enjoyed watching Nieshka startle at Alosha’s laugh and her awkward confusion between treating Stashek like a boy still too young to start his apprenticeship and the way everyone else treated him as the King he also was.

 

In public, Kasia occasionally had to enforce people treating him as the King, especially Nieshka. The fact that there were only two (three) people in the world who called him Stashek was very much by design. The Archduke of Varsha might be happy that his daughter would be queen but he’d be even happier if the King left most of the ruling to his future father-in-law. The Regent did his best but if everyone was used to the Archduke condescending to the King, it would continue long past his coming of age. Solya was a very useful distraction to draw Nieshka away in public so she wouldn’t trip up and treat King Kasimir as Stashek, even if it did leave her annoyed and venting to Kasia.

 

For the months that Nieshka stayed, they both had responsibilities of their own. Kasia, while learning how to be Captain of the Guard on top of learning the skills needed to be a guard at all, also had to learn the eccentricities of the capital city and the royal palace. She needed to learn quickly and thoroughly everything that happened at the palace. It was the duty of the King’s guard to protect him from any threat and she was not willing to fail in that duty.

 

Agnieszka studied with and was studied by the sorcerers in the Court. She also had to explain, over and over again, what she could of the magics that had been worked in the Wood and the magics she was still working to clear it of the malevolent and tragic influences that had corrupted it.

 

They made time to spend with each other though, stole a few moments here and there from their duties. Nieshka had been given her own set of rooms, as befitted an officially recognized sorceress in the Court, but most nights found her in Kasia’s rooms.

 

It was there that Nieshka told Kasia the true and full story of defeating the Wood, their desperate ride on the river, the discovery of the Wood Queen’s history, and the final healing of the trees in the heart of the Wood. Nieshka told Kasia of sending the Wood Queen into her own peaceful sleep.

 

“She remembered the wrong things. She remembered all the worst parts of how to be people. She repaid cruelty and fear with more cruelty and fear until there was so little love left in her. Oh, Kasia. She wanted to protect her people, to help them grow, and instead she twisted them and bound them.”

 

Kasia couldn’t find any words to share with Nieshka as her dearest friend looked at her pleadingly.

 

“She forgot how to be at peace. It was her sister who saved her, really. I helped but it was their love for each other and their desire to rest together that let the end happen.” Nieshka’s voice was whisper-soft and almost desperate.

 

All Kasia could do was pull Nieshka into her arms and hug her gently.

 

Stroking Nieshka’s hair, Kasia thought about her own flight from the Wood with the children huddling in the creaking, swaying wagon. Back then, she had been sure that if anyone could defeat the Wood, it would be Nieshka.

 

She had been right. Not simply because of Nieshka’s power and ingenuity and the strange way her magic worked which seemed to fit so well with the magic of the Wood. Nieshka might be the only person Kasia could think of who would have made the choices she had. Who could have faced all of the suffering that the Wood Queen had caused and chosen to give her into gentle sleep.

 

The world might be a very different place if more people made choices like that. Perhaps different enough that none of the pain would have happened at all.

 

Kasia spent that night remembering the walkers who had taken her and bound her to a corrupted heart tree—who Nieshka worked alongside now to grow fruit and clear the Wood. She remembered the darkness and the hate that infused the very air and the skittering creatures she couldn’t see and the shining terribleness of the mantises. She remembered the blood and fire and death surrounding the attempted rescue of the Queen and the blood and fire and death when the Wood attacked the Tower. She thought of Marek with his face as open as a child’s as the image of his mother killed him causally. She thought of Stashek and Marisha, their mother dead in front of them and their father lost on the battlefield, all orchestrated by the Wood.

 

Kasia knew Nieshka better than anyone ever had and probably ever would. She had stood beside her and behind her and in front of her for most of their lives and in the light of Luthe’s Summoning they had seen into each other’s secret most hearts. And even with all of that, Kasia still wasn’t sure she really understood Nieshka. She wondered if Nieshka really understood her.

 

It was a very long night.

 

Over the next week, both Kasia and Nieshka were quieter than usual. Nieshka spent much of her time in the library searching for books like Jaga’s with spells that worked for her brand of magic. Kasia found herself retreating to Alosha’s forge whenever she had a spare moment.

 

Alosha the Sword had a forge along the edge of the courtyard for the royal guard’s barracks. Near the forge was a scorched and blackened iron block. It was where they had beheaded and burned the Corrupted when the Wood managed to reach all the way to the Capital.

 

Kasia understood that she wasn’t supposed to find it a comforting place.

 

Somehow though, Alosha’s forge was where she felt the safest.

 

It was familiar; the scents and sounds and heat of the air reminded her of the blacksmith in her home village where her older brother had been apprenticed. In spite of the clanging metal and hissing steam and constant noise, it also felt calm to Kasia. No one came into Alosha’s forge to ask her to confirm the orders she had set the guards to just that morning. No one interrupted to ask her about some event that happened years ago in the capital and then slyly attempt to pretend surprise when she admitted her ignorance. Even Solya usually left her alone when she was in the forge. Even Nieshka did.

 

The first time Kasia had found herself hiding in the forge had been soon after their arrival in Kralia. Nieshka had brought several letters from her family to Kasia including one from her oldest sister. Her sister’s awkward hand-writing and constant misspellings did not, unfortunately, make the letter unreadable and Kasia felt numb as she read through the demands that she return home and comfort her mother and stop hurting the family. As if they hadn’t long ago resigned themselves to the idea that Kasia would leave forever. As if they hadn’t told her over and over that that was her fate and her responsibility.

 

That first time, Kasia had gone to the forge mostly because it was the nearest fire she could find and she had several pieces of paper she desperately needed to burn. It took five little piles of ash before she had a reply that she could send back to her sister without feeling guilty.

 

Alosha herself seemed equally willing to work without speaking or to address any conversation Kasia might start. She always let Kasia start them and didn’t seem bothered if Kasia never did.

 

The only other place that felt as right and comfortable to Kasia was inside the practice ring with a sword in hand and guardsmen around her. She had spent her childhood being urged to be brave and active, pushed to learn quickly and perfectly skills that had little use in the small village around her, and reminded over and over that when the Dragon took her it would be the price for the safety of the entire Valley.

 

Here, bravery was not a sacrifice but a triumph. Now, she was learning a skill by her own choice that would give her the freedom to defend others herself instead of depending on a distant lord. And no one would ever be able to determine her fate for her like that again.

 

Kasia also took time each day to spend with Stashek and Marisha. She tried to be there in the mornings as they broke their fast and prepared for their day and in the evenings before they went to bed. During the day, King Kasimir was very busy attending lessons in swordsmanship and strategy and etiquette and Kingship. These were mostly lessons he had had before, but were now much more intense. On top of that, he often sat with his grandfather, the Regent, as decisions were made and judgements given.

 

As a princess and still a very young one, Marisha had an entirely different set of lessons and quite a bit more free time to play. Kasia and Alosha were conspiring together to try and make sure some form of self-defense was included in her lessons but they were opposed by a legion of nursemaids. They were considering the best tactic to enlist Solya to convince the Countess, who still did not approve of Kasia and whose orders the nursemaids were employed under.

 

No matter what else was happening, Kasia made sure that whenever either child was out in public, she was present as one of their personal guards. She wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever, especially as the royal heirs grew into more varied duties, but she thought she might be able to manage until she had assembled a group of guards that she truly and fully trusted.

 

Many of the royal guards had died in the Wood’s attack on the palace and more had died with Marek at the Tower. Those few men who survived the Tower and escorted Kasia and the children to Gidna had all been offered a place with the royal guard if they didn’t already have one but only a few had taken it up. The current royal guard was filled with some veterans, many young men inspired by the stories and songs coming from the defeat of the Wood, and those noble sons whose families had pushed them into doing something useful and honorable in the hopes that it would keep them out of trouble.

 

Under Alosha’s advice, Kasia was rotating the guards in and out of duties so she had a chance to see how all of them acted in different circumstances. And so that she knew all of their names and personalities and strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it felt like her head was as thick and stiff as the wood it resembled keeping track of so much new and strange information.

 

She was taking note of the most trustworthy and the least useful among the guards. She had not, however, managed to figure out a way to promote the first and get rid of the second. King Kasimir was very young and even if he had been older she wasn’t sure he would have been able to force the nobles to accept her enough to give her that kind of leeway. King’s champion, enchanted warrior, and heroine of the Tower, too many people were still aware that she was a strange upstart from a place they couldn’t recall the name of.

 

It was one of the more useful guards who was paired with her to guard the King at a public judgment several stilted weeks after Nieshka’s nighttime confessions of her choices in the Wood. The Regent had two men of his own there but by tradition the King was always accompanied by two members of the King’s guard. Patryk was one of the men from the Tower—the soldier who had braved Kasia’s strangeness and entered the wagon to get breakfast for the men. The soldier who had smiled when she stood ready to defend the children from him and who had calmly given her food.

 

He was one of the men Kasia trusted the most in all the guard. That was why it was so strange when she realized that something felt very, very wrong.

 

Standing on the royal dais, Kasia was at least a head taller than anyone else in the room. She wore the colors of the royal guard but little in the way of armor. Even though she stood behind the grandeur of the royal family and should have blended into the background, she knew that many eyes were on her. Too many stories had been told about the King’s undefeatable champion for her to not to be noticed.

 

Trying to keep her appearance of stiff formality, Kasia subtly flexed her body, ready to leap between any danger and King Kasimir. She scanned the room carefully, looking for something to explain what she felt.

 

Nothing stood out. Bored nobles, nervous petitioners—everybody fit in the room. Everybody felt right.

 

Turning her head slightly, she tried to catch Patryk’s attention. He was distracted and his head was cocked in a strange manner.

 

He was the source of the wrongness.

 

No.

 

He was next to the source of the wrongness. There was something there, by him, something she couldn’t see but could feel. Something that felt like…magic!

 

Kasia moved swiftly, reaching Stashek with one hand and pulling him behind her even as her other hand freed her sword. Two knives flew from the air near Patryk—one glanced off her hip, the other struck her thigh with a thunk and remained there, quivering with the force of the blow.

 

She felt Stashek holding on to the back of her shirt and the small trickle of thick blood on her thigh. The room was full of noise as people shouted in surprise and horror. She saw Patryk’s still dazed expression and the Regent’s guard drawing his sword ready to cut him down.

 

“Stop!” Kasia put all the force she had learned in a year of standing as the Captain of the Guard into her command.

 

She stepped forward, moving carefully so as to not expose Stashek behind her. She lifted her own sword, forged by the hands of Alosha the Sword, and thrust it into the air next to Patryk, whose confusion was starting to turn to horror.

 

There was a man there, blood dripping from the new cut on his right arm. She had seen him there the entire time, she realized suddenly. It was as if her mind had simply disregarded the information her eyes had been giving her.

 

The man snarled at her while gripping his bleeding arm and turned to flee. Patryk and the Regent’s guard wrestled him to the ground before he could move more than a step, their confusion not standing against years of training in action.

 

Kasia felt a strong urge to bustle Stashek—no, King Kasimir—off the dais and into the safety of the royal wing. He should not stay so exposed in the face of such obvious danger. But something still felt wrong. Something about the magic the man had been using.

 

Soyla appeared out of the crowd of stunned nobles, his face stern and his movements strong and sure. Kasia forgot, sometimes, that he was a war wizard.

 

“Kill him, immediately!” commanded the Regent. His guard lifted his sword again. Kasia felt a strong urge to run the man through herself and protect Kasimir by removing the source of danger. There was still something wrong in the air around them.

 

“Stop!” Kasia demanded again, pushing her still out-stretched sword in front of the man.

 

The Regent’s guard looked to the Regent. Patryk looked to Kasia.

 

Solya stepped onto the dais. “This man is clearly a wizard. It’s not safe to give him time to work another spell, Captain.”

 

“No, I don’t think that’s right.” Kasia hesitated. For more than a year, this ability had been her own secret. She hadn’t even told Nieshka. “The magic. It doesn’t feel like it’s his.”

 

Solya blinked at her. The entire room felt still and hushed, although it might have only been the roaring in Kasia’s ears.

 

A sudden crash echoed through the room as Agnieszka, the Forest Witch, ran into the room followed by the Dragon and Alosha the Sword.

 

/\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\\./\

 

The room was one of the smaller meeting rooms in the royal wing of the palace. In the corner, the assassin sat on the floor, bound by both the Dragon and the Falcon’s magic, with Alosha and two guardsmen standing over him.

 

On one side of the room stood the Regent with the captain of his guard, Solya, and the Archduke of Varsha. The King’s future father-in-law glared daggers at Kasia, who stood on the other side of the room. Behind her stood Nieshka and the Dragon.

 

King Kasimir, in spite of everyone present attempting to send him away, stood in between the two parties. If she wasn’t so frustrated at his nearness to a proven danger, Kasia would have been proud of the boy for standing so firm in his choices.

 

After Kasia’s revelation in the public hall and the dramatic entrance of the three sorcerers, it had taken some work to clear the room. In the end, it had been easier to retreat into the royal wing with guards preventing the very interested onlookers from following.

 

After Solya and the Dragon both examined the man and agreed that he was not a wizard, the Regent had backed down from his insistence that he be executed on the spot.

 

In truth, Kasia thought that if she wasn’t the one who had stopped him, the Regent might have backed down more quickly. As soon as they had left the public hall, he had started looking slightly confused and worried. He had glanced back at her though and his face had hardened.

 

The Regent was the Count of Gidna and had been a man of shrewd enough tactics to keep that city-state from being subsumed by the nearby Kingdoms until he married his daughter off to the Crown Prince of Polyna. Kasia knew that he knew that it didn’t make sense to kill an assassin so quickly when he was already thoroughly bound. There were so many things they needed to learn from the man and, as he had not presented an immediate danger, killing him would have been a waste of valuable information.

 

Something in the hall had made people act as if they couldn’t see the man. Something in the hall had encouraged them to kill the man before he spoke to them.

 

Kasia wondered if that same something would have encouraged them to dispose of the body without examining it—or if it would have instead encouraged them to look closely at who had just attempted to kill the King of Polyna.

 

The assassin wore Rosyan clothing. A letter in his pocket was written in Rosyan and it described in detail how to enter the palace and what the King’s schedule was for the day. If they had executed him on the spot, the only conclusion possible would have been that he was a Rosyan wizard. The examination that proved that he had no magic of his own only worked on a living person and Rosya was as thorough as Polyna in making sure that all wizards were known to and part of their Royal Court.

 

“Rosya has broken the peace treaty,” declared the archduke, scowling at Kasia and Nieshka. “Clearly we must answer this transgression with force. We must make it clear to these villains that Polyna will not be brought low by their underhanded tactics!”

 

“We don’t know that this was Rosya,” Nieshka argued back. “Maybe he was working alone. Or maybe…maybe someone else is trying to make it look like Rosya.”

 

Solya arched an eyebrow at her and the archduke laughed contemptuously. “Why would anyone try to make it seem as if Rosya had broken the peace treaty?”

 

“Maybe they want a to start a war.”

 

“That is a ridiculous assertion.”

 

“Something is wrong here! Kasia felt it and you should be able to realize it too. Something wants us to fight Rosya. The Wood tried to do it before to distract us into killing each other. We can’t give into that now.”

 

Solya shook his head at her, his expression smoothing into condescension. “The Wood is gone. You defeated it yourself, with Sarkan’s help, of course. It is far simpler to understand that this is exactly what it seems. Rosya has used this assassin to try and murder our beloved King Kasimir. A Rosyan wizard cast the magic that hid him from our sight.” He turned to the Regent. “We must respond immediately, Sire. Rosya’s next move must be an attack on our lands and we must anticipate them. The best defense, it is said, is a good offence.”

 

Solya, Kasia remembered, was not just any war wizard. He had been the war wizard for Prince Marek, who had chased glory from battlefield to battlefield.

 

Kasia could feel Nieshka’s frustration behind her. There was clearly something more going on here. Something strange and wrong. But the man was also clearly Rosyan. The few words he had spoken had a distinct accent and the longer she watched him the more she thought she had seen him before. He had been in the company of the Rosyan knights at the tournament in Gidna.

 

Kasia understood why Nieshka was fighting against the possibility of a war. So many Polynan soldiers were dead so recently and the battle at the Tower had been a terrible reckoning for the two girls, raised on songs of that told only of the glory of war and not of its horrors. Nieshka, who had managed to bring peace even to the Wood Queen, would want to find another way now too.

 

And yet, watching Kasimir out of the corner of her eye, his young face solemn and pale, Kasia wasn’t sure that she could find another way. Or want to. She had sworn to protect this boy and his sister—sworn it to his mother, lying dead in the palace as she attempted to protect them herself; sworn it to the children a hundred times on the road from Kralia and from the Tower and as they woke from nightmares in Gidna; she had even sworn it to Nieshka at the crossroads of Olshenka. She couldn’t allow this attempt to go unpunished and then to be repeated. Could she?

 

What of what Solya said, that defending might be best accomplished by attacking? How much truth was in that? Surely a war wizard such as the Falcon, veteran of so many campaigns, knew the best strategy for defending the country.

 

Nieshka and the archduke were shouting at each other. So were Solya and the Dragon. Kasimir was glaring at his grandfather and the Regent was glaring right back. The guardsmen were glancing agitatedly between them, hands on the hilts of their swords.

 

Alosha, on the other hand, was crouched down by the assassin, examining him closely.

 

Something was still wrong.

 

Alosha reached out and pulled something off the man’s clothing. She immediately crushed it in her gauntleted fist.

 

It felt as if the room itself took a giant breath and then exhaled roughly. It felt like a miasma had been lifted to reveal familiar shapes underneath.

 

It felt like the Wood.

 

For a moment, everyone was frozen. Then Nieshka and the Dragon rushed over to Alosha and the assassin. Kasia rushed over to Kasimir.

 

She could hear the sorcerers muttering frantically to each other from across the room.

 

“Is that?”

 

“It can’t be— “

 

“Do you think— “

 

“What is— “

 

“No, try— “

 

The Regent and the Archduke moved to stand in front of Kasimir. They joined Kasia in forming a protective wall between him and the rest of the room although they didn’t try to insist again that he leave

 

Without their anger and distrust being enhanced by whatever spell the assassin had been wearing, it was much easier to make some basic decisions.

 

Everyone agreed that the assassin himself was Rosyan, but there was nothing to prove who might have sent him and he remained steadfastly silent. The sorcerers disappeared into the library with the captive and several guards to spend the night examining exactly what the spells he had were and where they might have come from.

 

Solya, the Regent and the Archduke agreed to create a strategy to present for the King’s approval. It was, Kasia knew, mostly a formality. The Regent and the Archduke together had the authority to make the decisions ahead but the approval of the King would make it more honorable and palatable to the people. Especially when the most likely result was restarting the war with Rosya.

 

Kasia took Kasimir back to his rooms. Marisha was waiting there for them, having thrown a tantrum until her guards—also men from the long journey to Gidna and intimately familiar with the little princess’s temper and some of the history behind it—had ignored her nursemaids and brought her to her brother’s room. Marisha immediately wrapped herself around Stashek and refused to let go of him the rest of the night. Kasia gave them each a sip of Spindle water and put them to bed.

 

She settled in a chair by the bed with an eye on both the door and the window across from it. She did not sleep that night.

 

Unsurprisingly, considering the complexity of the issues, it took several days and long nights before enough information had been gathered to make the next set of decisions. Kasia spent every minute of the time within reach of Stashek and Marisha, although she desperately missed the peace of Alosha’s forge.

 

Eventually, the sorcerers determined that the magic used in the assassination was neither a renewed attempt by the Wood to destroy humankind nor a holdover of any previous attempt. At least, not quite. Alosha had once described the Wood’s plans as the plans of an oak tree spreading its acorns across the land and waiting patiently to see which sprouted.

 

Some of those acorns had apparently been discovered by curious wizards and without the Wood Queen’s intelligence controlling them, they had been vulnerable to the wizards’ experiments. Polyna’s council of wizards was fairly confident that spells were based on the Wood’s magic but without its full power or ability to corrupt those around it.

 

Nieshka told Kasia privately that there were several wizards on the council who were unconvinced, but she didn’t think that was based on any evidence so much as on a general tendency of wizards to be contrarian and obstructive.

 

A strategy was presented to Kasimir for his expected approval. It involved setting up defensive lines along the border with Rosya…and preparations for invading that country in retaliation for the attempted assassination of the King of Polyna.

 

Solya and Nieshka banded together to bully Kasia into sleeping in her own bed in the guards’ barracks. Alosha showed up in the royal chamber during the argument, trailed by four guards that Kasia had grown to trust and rely on. She sat down heavily in the chair Kasia had been using at night and proceeded to set out supplies for sharpening her sword.

 

Kasia gave in. She still didn’t sleep much, but with Nieshka’s warm weight against her side and Alosha taking her duty, it was a more restful night than she had had in a long time.

 

By the next day, Nieshka and Solya’s momentary alliance had been thoroughly abandoned.

 

Solya was insistent that Kasia should join the front lines of the battle. He appeared constantly, at her side during morning practice, sitting next to her at the midday meal, and coming up behind her as she sharpened Alosha’s sword. In spite of being magic, the sword still needed to be sharpened occasionally. Thinking of Alosha calmly setting out her tools with the grace of a ritual, Kasia wondered if that need was entirely purposeful.

 

“My dear Captain— “Solya started once again.

 

Kasia shook her head. “I am still not ‘your dear’ anything, Solya.” She wasn’t sure why he kept repeating this tactic. It had never worked for him, not with her.

 

“Respected Captain of the Guard,” she expected him to smirk, but his face was serious. “Surely you must see what an asset you would be on the battlefield.”

 

“I am not a soldier. I am a guard and even that is still new for me.”

 

“Kasia, Kasia. I understand that you feel unprepared. But you are quite gifted and there are many among the war wizards who are eager to train you— “

 

“No, Solya.” Kasia refused to look up from her sword, examining the edges carefully.

 

“You are stronger than any man in the army, more skilled with that sword than anyone has a right to expect, and as close as anyone living might get to being invulnerable. And, apparently, you can sense magic.”

 

“I am not a weapon of war. I will not be a sword or trebuchet for you to launch against soldiers of any kind. My duty is to protect the King and the princess, not fight in your battles.”

 

Solya laid his hand on her shoulder and waited until she gave in and looked up at him. “You think I see you as a mere weapon? Kasia, you would be an inspiration. The soldiers of Polyna would look at you, at your unstoppable force and beauty, and it would give them strength to keep fighting. Your duty is to protect our King and princess—what better protection can you give them than an entire country fighting to stop any enemy from getting close to them?”

 

Kasia fled to Alosha’s forge. The Sword was working on some new project. Kasia didn’t get close enough to be sure what it was. Alosha nodded at her but proceeded to ignore her as she collapsed in a corner, hidden from passers-by. Kasia buried her head in her knees and concentrated on breathing in a rhythm matching the pounding of Alosha’s hammer.

 

Solya was not the only one to send Kasia running that summer. Nieshka had heard of his plans and his many arguments and she was just as insistent that Kasia stay far away from battle.

 

Kasia knew Nieshka’s soul. She knew that part of why she argued so hard was from a desire to protect Kasia. This was Nieshka, who had gone into the Wood and shook the earth itself to bring Kasia back.

 

But she also knew that it was only part of her thoughts. Another part was her memories of the Queen. That sometimes she looked at Kasia and saw that terrible, inhuman figure destroying everyone around her, spreading fire and blood and death everywhere she went.

 

“I can’t make your choice, Nieshka,” Kasia whispered one night. “I don’t know how to forgive like that.”

 

“You forgave me. You always forgive me.”

 

“I love you. Of course I forgive you. This isn’t the same thing.”

 

“I’m sorry, you know. I’m sorry that I didn’t see how afraid you were back then.”

 

“You were afraid too. And when the Dragon took you, I think we traded all our feelings about it all anyways.”

 

“Maybe. But even though you were afraid, you were so brave, Kasia. You were always so brave.”

 

“I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t be anything else.”

 

Nieshka ignored Kasia’s bitter statement although Kasia was sure she knew it was true. Nieshka had been there when her mother pushed her to climb higher, to swim further, to return to the places where she fell or faltered until she could overcome them.

 

Instead, Nieshka took the conversation on a different path, one Kasia had an unhappy suspicion was entirely planned.

 

“Do you remember when Grzgorz started teasing me about ripping my dresses all the time? And I pushed him into that ditch. And you stood in between and wouldn’t let him hit me? And you were so nice and sweet to him even while you were standing up to him that he went away completely confused?”

 

“I remember,” Kasia said softly.

 

“Mother was so mad at me. She told us that peace is a virtue.”

 

“And you said that people should stand up to bullies.”

 

“I did. And Mother said that you and I both stood up to him and I did it by pushing him and that just made things worse. But you did it by being kind.”

 

“I also did it by protecting you and refusing to let him hurt you.”

 

“Yes but— “

 

“Nieshka, I think you’re right. I think peace is a virtue. And what you did with the Wood—I know it was the right choice, even if I couldn’t have done it. But you didn’t go into the Woods to put the Wood Queen to sleep and give her peace. You went in to stop her, whatever it took. You went in because of all the people who had been hurt and because you wanted to stop her from hurting anyone else.”

 

“Yes.” She said, her voice as quiet and solemn as Kasia’s.

 

“Peace may be a virtue, but how can I take that virtue for my own when the cost is someone else’s suffering?”

 

“Kasia— “

 

“No, listen. There are people who can’t fight. There are children like Stashek and Marisha and they can’t defend themselves. Not yet. And there are people who have fought so hard and lost so much already. And they’re the ones who are threatened. If I don’t fight—I can live a happy life. I can go somewhere where no one will try to hurt me. I can defend myself and the people I love without even thinking about it. But if I choose peace because I want to be virtuous, what happens to all of the people I could have protected?”

 

“Oh, Kasia…”

 

“They’re using the Wood’s magic. They’re using that hate and anger as a weapon. I can’t let that happen. I won’t let it continue,” Kasia blinked away tears. “I’m not her, you know. I’m not a mindless weapon. I’m not Corrupted. I haven’t forgotten what it means to be human. I promise.” Instead of sounding strong and sure as she wanted, Kasia realized that her voice sounded pleading and lost.

 

She started spending her nights in Alosha’s forge too, sleeping on a bed roll near the fire.

 

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A messenger came from the Valley, from Zatochek, which was still the nearest village to the Wood.

 

The walkers were agitated.

 

It was time for Agnieszka, the Forest Witch, to go home.

 

Kasia hated for Nieshka to leave now, while they were both still unhappy. She hated that Nieshka was going back to the Woods when things weren’t quite right—leaning against a post in Alosha’s forge, Kasia acknowledged the contradiction there. Nieshka was just as worried about her heading into battle. Half of their problem was being frightened for each other.

 

Kasimir gave an official royal directive to Agnieszka and the Dragon. They were to investigate the issues of the walkers and how the magic used by the assassin might be connected to the Wood. They were to protect the people of the Valley. Kasia wondered if the previous King would have included the last order—there were several nobles who seemed stunned at his concern for peasants in far off villages.

 

Kasia stood at Kasimir’s back when he gave the order in front of the Court. Solya stood nearby watching carefully for any evidence of magic. Kasia kept her own senses open and wary, but she was distracted watching Nieshka whose face was flushed with relief.

 

It wasn’t just the urgency of the situation or the discomfort between the two friends. Nieshka disliked Kralia, Kasia knew. She disliked the Court and the petty games of the nobles, the formality of the palace, and the way presentation and appearance mattered so much. She missed the forest and people she knew.

 

Kasia would miss her so much.

 

She imagined going with Nieshka. She thought about leaving behind those guardsmen who resented her rise in station and who slyly worked to undermine her orders and authority.

In the Valley, she wouldn’t awaken from her nightmares to an impatient nursemaid requiring her to come comfort Marisha or Stashek from their own night terrors. In the Valley, people wouldn’t simper and smile at her face and then sneer at her accent behind her back.

 

In the Valley, people would see her polished wooden beauty and unnatural strength and their first thought would be the Wood and the way it twisted minds. In the Valley, people would look at Kasia’s accomplishments and then turn and praise her mother instead for her bravery and sacrifice in raising such a good daughter knowing the Dragon would come for her.  

 

In the Valley, Alosha wouldn’t be there to critique her swords forms and push her body into new and uncomfortable positions that somehow fixed her balance. She wouldn’t be able to watch the best of the guards slowly come to respect her for her tenacity and determination to learn everything she needed to know to protect Stashek and Marisha. Kasia wouldn’t be able to watch the children grow up, to see the difference between Stashek laughing and playing with his sister and Kasimir issuing decrees and judgements so confidently. She wouldn’t be there to smile when he stopped looking back to his grandfather for confirmation or to grin when he broke protocol and acted like the boy he still was. She wouldn’t be there to see Marisha grow into the name Regelinda Maria or to tell her stories and sing her songs when Marisha escaped her nursemaids at night.

 

When Nieshka left, Kasia hugged her close and didn’t mention going with her. After a long, warm moment, Nieshka pulled back slightly to look into Kasia’s eyes. She smiled and leaned forward to rest her forehead against Kasia’s.

 

“I do trust you, Kasia.” Nieshka whispered. “We’re walking different paths through the forest but it’s alright. We’ll always find each other when we need to.”

 

Kasia bit back a slightly hysterical laugh. She breathed in deeply. After an entire summer in hot, crowded Kralia, Nieshka still smelled like the forest, damp moss and earthy mushrooms and newly cut wood and fresh water. Kasia kissed Nieshka gently and stepped back.

 

“I have faith in you, Agnieszka of the Forest. And I promise, I’ll take care of the people here.”

 

Kasia spent that night in the forge again. Alosha was busier than ever; making arrows enchanted to fly to true, horseshoes imbued with strength and endurance, nails to hold together against the battering stones of catapults. While Kasia lay on a bed roll in the corner of the room, Alosha turned to work on the project she had pulled out several times before. Kasia wasn’t sure what it was. A piece of armor, maybe? Alosha was putting as much magic into it as the sword she had given Nieshka—that Nieshka had given Kasia—that Kasia had used to fight against the Wood Queen and destroy her body in the Tower.

 

Kasia didn’t ask Alosha what she was making. She relaxed in the firelight, losing herself in the rhythms of Alosha’s movements. The forge was uncomfortably hot in the waning summer evening and some part of Kasia’s wooden body cried out with fear at the sight of the fire. And yet, Kasia couldn’t imagine choosing to be anywhere else. As she drifted into sleep, she thought that the forge’s light seemed like a kinder, softer version of the light of Luthe’s Summoning, the spell that Nieshka and the Dragon had used to bring Kasia out of the darkness of the Wood.

 

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The preparations for war continued. The strategy decided by the Regent and the Archduke and formally approved by the King was to fortify the borders through the autumn and spend the winter preparing to push forward.

 

Solya continued to pressure Kasia to train with the war wizards and join the front lines. Kasia continued to train hard with the guard and to escape to Alosha’s forge whenever she had a moment free of duty. Alosha continued to work on her special project in between outfitting the army with magical weapons and tools.

 

The entire capital was tense with anticipation and fear. It was not even two years since the last battle with Rosya and the devastating attack on the Tower had killed many of Polyna’s best soldiers. They weren’t recovered enough for another war.

 

The only hope was that Rosya wasn’t either.

 

As soldiers began to move, marching to forts and castles along the border, guarding the mountain passes until winter closed them, Kasia re-organized the guard. The regent and archduke had started adding their own comments to Solya’s suggestions that her presence would motivate the soldiers along the border. No matter what, she would make sure the children were protected by only the best and most trust-worthy of guardsmen.

 

In spite of every attempt to keep things quiet around her, Marisha started having more temper tantrums during the day and more nightmares at night. Stashek was quieter and quieter, but Kasia was sure that he was having nightmares as well. She started staying in his room again, watching him and Marisha cling together in sleep. Alosha joined them more rarely; the woman barely had any time for sleep herself with all the work she was doing. The two women didn’t speak much, they just sat together, watching over the children in their care and taking comfort in each other’s presence.

 

Kasia wondered what Alosha’s opinion was about Kasia going to battle but she couldn’t bear to ask. She remembered Alosha’s practical insistence that the needs of the greater country should outweigh the needs of the few people in the Valley. That Nieshka was letting sentiment defeat the greater good. She remembered Alosha, burned and wounded almost beyond human imagination, still standing and fighting the Corrupted guardsmen trying to kill the royal family.

 

She couldn’t bear for Alosha to think she was afraid. To know how much battle terrified her. To know how much of it was that she was afraid of herself.

 

A sword still felt right in Kasia’s hands. In the practice ring, with guardsmen attacking her, she felt more strong and sure of herself than ever.

 

Nieshka wasn’t the only one who remembered the Wood Queen and the battle of the Tower. Sometimes Kasia dreamed of being her, of striding through fire and darkness, cutting down her enemies without even noticing any attempts they made to injure her. Of reaching her goals without care for those who stood between her and them. Kasia always woke up crying.

 

As autumn wore on, things settled down. Most of the soldiers were in their places already. Solya and the other war wizards would join them closer to the spring—more than a few of the noble commanders were also over-wintering in the comfortable capital, but the bulk of the army was dispersed to protect the borders.

 

Stashek was more and more quiet and thoughtful. It worried Kasia a little but she was distracted by the constant wrestling with her own decisions. Solya told her, over and over, that the best way to protect Stashek and Marisha and Nieshka and all the people she loved was to defeat Rosya and remove the threat. Memories of Nieshka echoed through her mind, telling her that cruelty turned to cruelty, that the people of the Tower had learned the wrong things about magic and that the Wood Queen had remembered the wrong things about being a person. That Kasia and Nieshka were the children in between the two people and that it was their responsibility to choose what to remember and what to forget so as to make a better future. For everyone.

 

Kasia still hadn’t made a final decision by Midwinter.

 

Which is when Stashek finally spoke up and shared what he had been quietly thinking about for months.

 

He wanted to visit the border outposts himself.

 

Everyone protested. He couldn’t put himself in danger like that. He was too young. He was a king without an heir. There wasn’t any point—he wouldn’t be of any help. The Regent tried to simply forbid him.

 

Acting far more calm and mature than his years would suggest, Stashek—King Kasimir—countered every point. It was winter and the Rosyan army couldn’t make it through the mountain passes. They had been closed and unusable for months. Kasia and his guards would be with him and he wouldn’t stay for the battles in the spring. But he would go to remind the soldiers what they were fighting for and to give them a memory of their King standing strong and brave in front of them.

 

Kasimir had, apparently, been listening to Solya’s many attempts to talk Kasia into joining the front.

 

Once Kasimir managed to convince the council and the archduke, even his grandfather had to give in.

 

Kasia would be going to the border after all, with Kasimir beside her.

 

As she was overseeing the final packing of the sleigh that she and Kasimir would be riding in, Kasia felt Alosha come up behind her. Her magic was as harsh and strangely welcoming as her forge.

 

Kasia smiled widely, happy that Alosha thought enough of her to come and say farewell.

 

Alosha nodded at Kasia, her eyes warm and bright, and handed her the project she had been working on for months. It sang with so much magic that it took Kasia a moment to realize what it was.

 

“You’re good with that sword, girl. Good enough that you’ll be remembered for it and have songs written about it. But you are not a sword—this is what you are,” she said, tapping the metal insistently.

 

Kasia glanced down at the shield in her hands. She felt filled with light and with so many emotions she couldn’t tell one from another. Without a single thought in her head, she gently put the shield down on the sleigh, reached for Alosha, and kissed her with all the strength in her soul. Alosha responded with equal fervor, decades of work at the forge building muscles that were could match Kasia’s Wood-given strength.

 

When they finally separated, smiling, Alosha laughed softly. “Don’t forget it. And when you come back, bring Kasimir with you. He’s going to be a good king and I’ve spent a long time supporting the good kings of Polyna.”

 

Kasia kept the warmth of that moment close in her thoughts through the long, cold ride across the frozen roads to the first border castle.

 

For the most part, the month went as planned. Kasimir inspected the forts and castles and the men guarding them. He made speeches and smiled gracefully at the cheers of the soldiers. Kasia trained with the men at each castle—honing her own skills even as she demonstrated for the soldiers (and the inevitable spies among them) that Polyna had an undefeatable warrior on its side. She kept Alosha’s sword and shield near her at all times but she still wondered what she would do in the spring. She like the idea of being a shield, but she still wasn’t sure of the best way to go about it.

 

The plan fell apart near the Valley. They hadn’t planned to go all the way into the valley and it had very few soldiers stationed nearby. Although the valley was technically the one connection between Polyna and Rosya that was passable even in the dead of winter…the Wood was still too much of a deterrent for anyone to worry about. The pockets of dark magic would take Agnieszka years to clear out and still posed an enormous danger to anyone attempting to pass through. And although the mantises seemed mostly gone and the walkers peaceful, no one believed that would last if an army tried to cut its way through the forest.

 

So the Valley and the Woods were not a consideration in the plans devised by the Regent and his commanders.

 

Apparently, Kasimir had his own plans that he had not shared.

 

While Kasia was performing one of her demonstrations of strength and swords-skill for the soldiers, Kasimir slipped his guard and snuck out. He managed to get several miles away before Kasia caught up to him. She was not at all happy.

 

Kasimir had been listening to more than Kasia realized of the conversations happening throughout the capital. And he had been thinking and dreaming about all the terrible things that had happened and what had caused them. He had heard Nieshka’s stories and Kasia’s worries and Alosha’s thoughts about what made a good king.

 

And he wanted to stop the war before it happened.

 

Kasia wasn’t sure how he had managed it—she remembered her little siblings being sneaky, but not good enough at it to pull off something like this. Kasimir had managed to set up a meeting with the heir to the Rosyan crown. This had, apparently, been confirmed by the Dragon. And by Nieshka, whose wanderings through the Wood took her to both sides of the border.

 

The Regent, still grieving the loss of his daughter and furious over the threat to his grandson, had refused to consider any meetings for peace. He had also considered the attack an insult to him personally as the peace treaty being violated had been signed in Gidna under his watch.

 

Kasia thought briefly about grabbing Kasimir and dragging him all the way back to the capital. Without stopping.

 

This was not a safe plan. There were so many things that could go wrong, that might already have gone wrong.

 

“Please, Kasia. I know that you won’t let anything hurt me; that you want to keep me safe; but this is what I have to do. I’m the King. I have to protect my people.” Though his voice was clear and high and so very, very young, Kasia could hear an echo of iron in it.

 

Kasia had followed Nieshka into the Wood to rescue the Queen. Knowing the horrors there, the darkness and malevolence, she had gone on a mission she hadn’t really believed in because Nieshka had. Because it was all she could do to protect her.

 

She followed Kasimir into the Wood too.

 

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Nieshka guided them through the Wood. Kasia refused to smile at her but when Nieshka turned away forlornly, she caught her hand and squeezed it.

 

The path was light and open although Kasia could feel several dark spots in the Woods that Nieshka carefully led them around. Kasia was deeply grateful that they didn’t see any walkers. Nieshka told her that they were helping but Kasia didn’t think she would ever be able to forget the feeling of seeing them come out of the Wood, of having them grab her and take her and bind her to a heart-tree to be consumed and corrupted.

 

She walked as fast she could without losing her companions, breaking through the snow to provide a clear path for Kasimir.

 

At the edge of the Woods in Rosya, they met the Dragon. Along with a party of Rosyan soldiers.

 

Kasia kept one hand on her sword hilt and her shield arm loose and ready.

 

Prince Vasily, the Rosyan heir who had been lost with Polyna’s Queen, had been replaced with the cousin of the previous King. It was his son meeting with Kasimir. He was old enough to be Kasimir’s father, but only if he had been married very young.

 

Prince Ilya was a solemn young man with a strong, solid build. He looked like the sort of commander that would stand at the front of his soldiers and be followed out of love and respect. He reminded Kasia a bit of the bright and best parts of Prince Marek.

 

There were formalities to the meeting between a prince and a King, even on the edge of a magical woodland surrounded only by a small group of soldiers and some of the more eccentric sorcerers in the two Kingdoms. Ilya and Kasimir waited through them patiently and seriously.

 

When they were finished, Ilya was the first to speak. His voice was slow and deliberate, picking through the Polynan courtly dialect like he was making his way along a treacherous mountain path.

 

“Your grandmother was lost to the Wood with Prince Vasily. I’ve heard the rumors from Polyna. They say our good prince kidnapped her. Your father died in battle against Rosyan soldiers. You were attacked by an assassin who is from Rosya you say. Why should I believe that you want peace between our countries?”

 

Kasia wondered if the prince had reason to prefer a war himself.

 

Kasimir looked very, very young in front of Prince Ilya and his men. His face, however, was solemn and his voice strong. “I saw my uncle die.” Kasia flinched, momentarily brought back to that tomb under the Tower and that terrible moment.

 

Kasimir continued speaking. “My uncle died protecting my sister and me. My uncle, my father, my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather—they all died because of the Wood. Because it was twisting people and using them to try to destroy us all. It used hatred and fear and anger to do its work. The Forest Witch defeated it, but as long as we continue to let our choices be ruled by fear, anger and hatred, the Wood can still win. I won’t let the Wood win.”

 

“You say this,” Prince Ilya responded after a moment of thought. “Yet here you stand and next to you is a creature of the Wood. Is she not? Look at her skin, at her sword, at the magic my sorcerers tell me surrounds her. We have also heard the stories from the Dragon’s Tower. Of a warrior-queen who could not be stopped, who tore through an army like paper. This one defeated our best knights. They say they could not even scratch her. How do you speak of peace, of defeating the Wood, when you use it as a weapon? Surely you expect that Rosya will rise to defend itself against such terror.”

 

Kasia’s hand tightened on her sword; she forced it to relax and looking to Kasimir, looking for his nod of permission. Once it was given, she stepped forward slightly. The Rosyan soldiers tensed.

 

“I am not a sword to be wielded against you nor am I am creature of the Wood. My only interest is in protecting the royal family of Polyna.”

 

Prince Ilya’s eyebrows lowered thoughtfully. “My wizard here can hear truths and lies. Do you swear, Captain of the Guards, that you will not attack Rosya? That you will only defend your King?”

 

Kasia hesitated and spoke carefully. “I swear that I have no interest in fighting beyond protecting my King and his family. I have no grudge against Rosya and no desire to kill or destroy any person.”

 

It was a long and tense negotiation but they signed a preliminary peace treaty there, at the edge of the Woods. The Dragon and the prince’s truth-telling sorcerer signed as witnesses for their respective Kingdoms. Agnieszka, the Forest Witch, also signed. In spite of the fact that she had been acknowledged a sorceress by the Polyna Court and was herself Polynan, the Rosyans were willing to consider her a neutral party.

 

On the other side of the woods, Kasia and Kasimir met a frantic search party of royal guards. They sent a swift messenger to chase the one already speeding to the capital. Kasia wasn’t sure how the Regent would react to a message telling him that his grandson had disappeared along the border of the country they were planning war with and near the cursed woods that had killed almost his entire family—immediately followed by a message that said grandson had returned with a peace treaty with that same country and the blessing of the Forest Witch from those woods.

 

Kasimir might find himself without a regent before he was old enough to shave.

 

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That summer it was Kasia who visited Nieshka. The Dragon was at Court, assisting with the last of the very lengthy negotiations that had started with the meeting between King Kasimir and Prince Ilya. Alosha and Solya were keeping their eyes on the King alongside the entire guard. And Kasia had replaced her old second with Patryk, who had taken the attack on the King and his own uselessness as a reason to train harder than any other guard and as an incentive to learn what he could of magic. Kasia had chivvied Solya into answering any of the man’s questions and the two had a tentative friendship beginning.

 

The first week of her visit, Kasia stayed with her family. Marisha was there as well, having insisted on being able to visit a child she remembered playing with in the village. It was a stilted and awkward visit and Kasia was more grateful than she could admit when Marisha returned to palace with her retinue of guards and nurses and Kasia was free to move into Nieshka’s cottage in the forest.

 

Kasia didn’t stay long that trip. The woods were not a comfortable place for her and she found it difficult to sleep. During the days, she swam with Nieshka in the Spindle and wandered the forest tending to Nieshka’s strange tasks. Kasia even managed to get used to seeing the walkers although she was always tense and on guard around them.

 

Nieshka and the Dragon had tracked down the wizard who had used the magic of the Wood to craft spells for the assassin. Apparently, he had run afoul of one of the still corrupted heart-trees and its guardian mantises.

 

Kasia almost pitied him, remembering the horror of the trees. Still, she could not find it in her to forgive him and she thought it a bit fitting that a man willing to use hatred and fear to advance himself would die corrupted with terror and anger. She did not tell Nieshka this. She did share some of it with Solya, who used his connections with several bards to aid in the spread of stories across the lands. Soon everyone had heard that those who tried to use the Woods would be consumed by the Woods. It probably had an unfortunate side effect on Agnieszka’s reputation as the Forest Witch as well.

 

At night, Kasia and Nieshka curled up together in Nieshka’s tree cottage and whispered together as if they were still the young girls before the Dragon’s harvest year.

  

“You talk about Alosha a lot,” Nieshka whispered to Kasia one night.

 

“You don’t talk about the Dragon at all,” Kasia whispered back.

 

And the two young women giggled together, understanding each other perfectly.


	2. Odds and Ends: Seven Letters That Kasia Burned Instead of Sending

Dear Mother,

 

Thank you for making me walk back and forth to Smolnik to learn how to bake senkach cake. You were right. It is a much more useful legacy than your marriage veil.          

 

Kasia

 

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Happy Midwinter, to all my family!

 

I hope you are all bundled up very warmly. Gidna is cold, but not as cold as the Valley! ~~I’m not sure, actually. I don’t really feel cold the way I used to.~~ They have set up a candle tree that is easily twice as big as the one at home. ~~Walking past it makes me sick to my stomach~~. It is very beautiful. Please give my love to everyone.

 

All of my love,

Kasia

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Dear Nieshka,

 

Do you remember telling me stories when you were little? You said the pines whispered them to you. Trees don’t whisper to me. They sing.

 

I wish you were here,

Kasia

 

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Dear Mother,

 

You always told me I needed to learn to be brave. That I mustn’t cry.

 

When the Wood turned all the cow’s mad, I stole some of my brother’s clothes and walked to the Dragon’s Tower. I fought against the wolves. When Agnieszka saved me from the Wood, I went back in with her and I protected her from things more terrible than you can imagine. I stood against soldiers and monsters and Prince Marek himself to protect the little prince and princess. I stood in fire that the Dragon created and used a magic sword to fight an invincible Wood Queen.

 

The King named me his Champion and then the Captain of his Guards. In the stories they tell about me, they’ve started calling me the Golden Knight.

 

Am I brave enough for you?

 

Your daughter,

Kasia

 

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Dear Nieshka, 

 

It seems a little silly that I am sitting here in Alosha’s forge writing a letter to you when you are probably sitting in my room waiting for me.

 

I don’t know how to talk to you about this. I remember the Queen. Every time Solya tells me I should train for battle, I remember her. She was so terrible and awful.

 

I want to say that I would be different. Oh, Nieshka, I would be. I would be fighting to protect everyone. Stashek and Marisha and Alosha and Solya. And you. And out families and all the other families in Polyna who suffer when war comes.

 

I know that deep down you’re scared that I wouldn’t really be different from her. I am too. But what if Solya is right? What if I could save lives by fighting? What if I could make the war shorter? Do I really have the right to say no to that? I’m not the one who will really suffer if I do.

 

Every time Solya asks to train with him, I remember the look in your eye when you made that sword for me. And I remember that you did it anyway.

 

Please,

Kasia

 

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Dear Mother,

 

Stashek introduced Nieshka to his intended today. He is very impressed with her in the way that little boys are impressed with girls who are willing to play and spit and. Everyone knows that if he doesn’t marry her, her father will start a rebellion.

 

Nieshka finds it very sad. She doesn’t think Stashek is old enough to understand what it happening.

 

I don’t know how to tell her that at his age I knew what my future was going to be and I understood how important it is to find little ways to be happy about something you can’t change.

 

Maybe you can explain it to her for me.

 

Your daughter,

Kasia

 

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To the Lord of the Valley, Sarkan, the Dragon:

 

You were upset when you realized that I grew up thinking you would hurt me and take advantage of me. You apologized for making me afraid. You promised you weren’t going to take any more girls from the Valley.

 

I don’t care about your magic. If you hurt Nieshka, I promise that I will make sure you learn to be afraid of me.

 

Kasia

Captain of the King’s Guards


	3. Odds and Ends: Ten Dreams That Wake Kasia Up in the Middle of the Night

One

She is standing on the village green. There are others there, standing behind her. They don’t have faces. Nieshka is standing beside her, her warm hand holding tight to Kasia’s. She’s wearing a green dress and her wild hair is tightly braided. Kasia feels warm and bright because she knows Nieshka is dressed like that for her, that she made this special effort just for Kasia, so Kasia would know how much she loves her.

 

Then the Dragon comes. Sometimes he’s the man Kasia knows. Sometimes he’s an actual Dragon. Sometimes he takes Nieshka with him to the Tower. Sometimes he takes Kasia. She is never able to do anything to stop him.

 

Every time she dreams this, it’s always a nightmare.

 

Two

The Spindle is frozen over. Wolves are running across the ice, the size of horses. She can smell their breath, rotten with the sweet corruption of the Woods.

 

They are chasing Kasia and Nieshka. They run and run and run until she can’t breathe.

 

They’re in a party at the Royal Court of Kralia and Kasia is trying to find the King. He needs to command the guards to be ready for the wolves. No one will listen to her. The dancers turn around and they are the wolves, already there waiting for her. She hears Nieshka screaming at her to run, but she can’t move.

 

When she wakes up, Kasia patrols the entire palace, checking at every guard post.

 

Three

The walkers grab her by the river while she is washing clothes. The mantis creatures are stalking her through the trees. The Wood is crawling through her mind, leaving sticky trails of anger behind it. She can’t control her body or her voice and Nieshka is crying across from her. Her stomach is cramping from hunger after days and days of barely eating and her fingers are wrapped around Nieshka’s throat.

 

Some of the worst dreams aren’t really dreams. They’re memories.

 

Four

Everything is quiet and calm. She feels right. She feels at home.

 

She can feel the tree bark covering her back, embracing her.

 

She doesn’t sleep for days after the nights she has these dreams.

 

Five

She is in the Tower, in the tomb, holding on to Stashek and Marisha.

 

Prince Marek is standing in front of them, arms outstretched. He is reasoning with the Wood Queen, asking her to remember him, to stop.

 

She reaches for him and Kasia knows she is going to kill him. But she doesn’t. She caresses his face gently and Kasia knows he is smiling at her and then he turns, still smiling sweetly, and he runs his sword through Stashek and Marisha.

 

When she wakes up, she finds Marisha and Stashek in his room. Marisha whines when the light of the candle hits her closed eyes. Stashek is already awake, looking solemnly back at Kasia.

 

Six

There are shadows in her mother’s face. Kasia runs from her. Nieshka’s house is right there but when Kasia enters, it is filled with rotting trees and sickly miasma.

 

Kasia runs and runs. She can’t escape the Wood. She finds Nieshka and she hugs her close, so happy and relieved she feels like she is going to collapse.

 

Nieshka reaches up and pushes Kasia off of her and there is something wrong. Kasia wakes up before she sees the shadows in Nieshka’s face.

 

It takes her a long time to convince herself she is really awake as she stares across the courtyard to Alosha’s forge, hazy in pre-dawn mist.

 

Seven

Fire. There is fire everywhere. Alosha’s sword is melting and Kasia is burning, burning.

 

Every time she dreams of the fire, Kasia wakes up feeling cold.

 

Eight

She looks into a mirror. The Wood Queen is looking back at her.

 

This is the only dream that Kasia wakes up screaming from.

 

Nine

She and Nieshka are gathering berries in the woods. She squishes one with her thumb and it turns into a bug and flies away.

 

She’s had this dream since she was little. She doesn’t know why.

 

Ten

She is singing a song to Nieshka but she doesn’t know the melody. It’s Midwinter and they’re sitting together in Nieshka’s home. Sometimes she thinks the song is called the Sword and the Shield and it’s a song about glory in battle and warrior-heroines. Sometimes she thinks it is about a Golden Knight and a Forest Witch. Sometimes there’s a dragon in the song, sometimes not.

 

Sometimes she wakes up in Kralia and Alosha is snoring in her ear and she kisses her until the other woman wakes up. Sometimes she wakes up from the dream in the Valley and Nieshka is by her side and she snuggles closer to her. Nieshka is much, much more grumpy about being woken up in the middle of the night than Alosha is.


	4. Odds and Ends: Five Places That Kasia Travels to and the People She Travels With

**One:** **The Heart of the Woods, with Nieshka.**

 

They go there the second summer that Kasia visits Nieshka. It’s five years after the defeat of the Wood, nearly six since Kasia was taken and bound to a heart tree. She needs to see it for herself. Nieshka sits down by a small, clear pool of water while Kasia walks up to one of the tall trees. The clearing is dappled with light and shadows and a small breeze sings through the leaves. Birds and squirrels are chattering in the branches of the trees, squabbling over nuts and territories.

 

Kasia runs her hand across the hilt of Alosha’s Sword, feeling the magic in it. She knows Nieshka will be disappointed if she draws it, knows that there is nothing here for her to use it against it.

 

The peacefulness of this forest glade makes her want to scream.

 

**Two:** **Gidna, with Stashek and Marisha in late summer.**

 

They go most years while the children are underage. While Stashek is still young, the Count travels with them, escaping Kralia’s heat for the cool seaside of Gidna. As Kasimir grows up and the Regent is needed less and less, the Count starts to stay later in Gidna, returning just before the winter makes travel too uncomfortable for his taste. After Kasimir’s full coronation, Marisha often goes without him to visit their grandparents, usually with Kasia tagging along.

 

For the year that Kasia and the children had spent there, Gidna had been a sanctuary from the terrible things that had happened in Polyna. Later, visiting Gidna is a time of rest and play for the children but for Kasia, as Captain of the Guards, it is a time of increasing watchfulness. It is one of main ports for the entire region and it is full of traders from strange places with different customs and cultures.

 

Marisha, especially, likes to escape her minders and wander through the markets down to the ports. Her escapades keep Kasia on edge. To be honest, though, once she finds Marisha safe, Kasia enjoys strolling through the markets with her. Only in a place full of so many strangers from so many different places would a royal heir and a famous knight with magical skin like the finest of carved woods be able to walk unnoticed for even an hour.

 

Kasia never does become accustomed to the feel of salt water though. It always feels wrong somehow.

**Three:** **Rosya, with Marisha when the Princess marries the heir to the throne.**

 

King Ilya’s son is slightly younger than Princess Regelinda Maria and very handsome. Marisha seems happy enough to marry him although Kasia knows she doesn’t have much choice. The princess has grown out of the temper tantrums that had haunted the years after her parents’ deaths. Prince Evgeny is also, happily, a good man and a good king. Still, Kasia promises Kasimir that she will protect his little sister in this country that was once their enemy and she is careful to stay on guard.

 

Although Kasia had lived for years in Kralia and Gidna and had met people from around the world and spent quite a bit of time with Rosyans when Evgeny visited the court, she is still surprised to realize that Rosya is not much different than Polyna. It is colder on their side of the mountains and the winters are harsh enough that not even sleighs travel between the more remote towns at Midwinter. But in general, the people are the same and the land is the same.

 

The stories are a bit different though.

 

In Rosya, Kasia is not known as the King’s Champion—though she is still the heroine of song and legend who stood by the Forest Witch to defeat the Wood. Kasia finds quite a bit of amusement in the fact that most of the songs leave the Dragon as a villain kidnapping virgins and don’t mention that he was actually the one who went into the Wood with Nieshka. She knows he is annoyed but not hurt by this and so feels free to enjoy her amusement. She’s is significantly less amused that the songs that paint Nieshka as a villain are also popular in the capital of Rosya—although that changes swiftly as word gets around to the bards and troubadours that such songs do not earn a happy response from the new Queen and her bodyguard.

 

In Rosya, Kasia is often called the Golden Knight, a title that seems to have survived from the first time she faced Rosyan Knights as Kasimir’s coronation tourney. Marisha (who has not, in fact, grown into her name of Regelinda Maria but manages to pretend she has fairly well in public) enjoys the title quite a bit and conspires to dress Kasia in golden colors as often as possible. She even sends to Alosha in Kralia, who sends back golden armor enchanted to have the utility and strength of the best iron armor. Kasia isn’t sure if she loves it or hates it.

 

Without the Wood goading petty hatreds and fears, the two countries manage to keep the peace treaty for many years. Kasia gets used to Rosya, watching over Marisha and her children, visiting Nieshka in the Wood and Alosha in Kralia. Sometimes they visit her and she shows them Predha, the capital city of Rosya, the parts she has come to love and the parts she has not.

 

Predha’s castle is on a hill overlooking the city. As the Queen’s guard, Kasia has a room in the interior of the castle, where the fires can keep her warm throughout the year. Every morning though, she gets up and walks the windy walls. The cold doesn’t bother her and the view takes her breath away no matter how often she sees it. They learn that Alosha isn’t fond of heights and Nieshka likes Predha as little as she likes Kralia. Still, they visit and enjoy each other’s company. They love the city for the way Kasia loves it.

 

Peace doesn’t last forever, unfortunately. There are minerals in the mountains between Polyna and Rosya that become more valuable as new ways to use them are invented. And the mountain borders have never been hard lines since there had never been before been a need to define exactly where the mountain stopped being one country and became another.

 

When Kasimir’s youngest daughter and Marisha’s oldest grandson start leading the border skirmishes and raids, Kasia moves into Nieshka’s cottage in the Wood. Nieshka, herself, has moved deeper into the forest, away from the rapidly spreading villages of the valley.

 

Kasia stays in the Woods for nearly a decade, until the borders are finally officially agreed on and a ‘permanent’ peace treaty is signed between Polyna and Rosya. Nieshka is still busy monitoring the Wood. She has managed to clear out most of the truly dangerous places, but the Woods are still full of magic and abnormally responsive to the emotions of the people in them. One group of bandits or petty magic-user with a grudge can darken a section of the Wood for years, creating malevolent creatures and filling the air with a contagious sense of anger.

 

Kasia does what she can to help, with her sword and shield and golden armor. Once, in the years she is there, a more powerful sorcerer comes to Woods and uses it to fuel his own power. Freeing the heart-tree he managed to corrupt and clearing Zatochek of the small goblins that accompanied him spawns seven new songs about the Golden Knight and three tales about the Forest Witch. In only one of them is Nieshka a figure of good.

 

During Kasia’s time in the Woods, the Dragon stays in his Tower most of the time. He has learned that Nieshka will never allow herself to be so closed in but he needs to find his own happiness as well. They seem to manage together.

 

Alosha comes to visit often. She is growing weary of the fighting as well. Polyna is still ruled by a line of good Kings—but so is Rosya. At least with the Wood, there was something truly evil to fight.

 

After the peace treaty, Kasia returns, this time to Kralia. She does not rejoin the Guard. Instead, she becomes something of an independent champion, training bodyguards and riding out to defeat the few magical beasts that still appear in the mountains at times.

 

The next time she leaves Kralia, Alosha goes with her.

 

 

**Four:** **Namib, with Alosha.**

 

Kasia is curious about other lands. She has spent so long in Polyna and Rosya and found things to love in each place. Namib, where Alosha’s mother came from, seems like a good place to start, although it has been generations upon generations since Alosha might be able to claim any family there.

 

Namib is hot and dry and very beautiful. Kasia is happy to find that her almost wooden skin does not burn in the sun the way others with her complexion do. The two women wander the country, learning new skills and languages and finding new foods to enjoy. They never quite fit in—Alosha’s scars are long faded but the metal of her armor has fully become part of her body. In Polyna, everyone knew the story. Here, it marks her as a sorcerer, but not one any knows. Kasia is almost less visible near her, for the strangeness of her carven features melds into the strangeness of her skin and eyes and hair.

 

Kasia feels uncomfortable, so far from water and from the Spindle in particular, but she loves being surrounded by so many new things. She loves learning the songs of the people in the desert and the sounds that exist in their language that she has never heard before. She loves the watching the strange animals that roam between the small trees. She loves watching Alosha enjoy learning new magic and new ways of making things.

 

When they find themselves missing the harshness of winter, Alosha and Kasia track down a boat traveling back north. Sea water still feels wrong to Kasia and leaves her irritable and anxious, but travel overland is nearly impossible. They would be gone for years just trying to find their way. Alosha mends sail and works with the ship’s carpenter and blacksmith with equal interest.

 

They return to Polyna with a craving for a sweet and spicy drink and help negotiate a new trade route. The villages in the Valley of the Wood have become famous for a sweet yellow fruit that has tremendous healing power.

 

**Five:** **Venezia, with Alosha, Nieshka, and Sarkan.**

 

It is the farthest she ever manages to get Nieshka from the Woods. She has spent years visiting her friend and rambling on about the places she has seen and the things she has done. She tries to entice her with strange foods and stories of incredible beauty in places so wild that it is possible no human has ever stepped foot in them.

 

The key ends up being Alosha. She is growing old, exhausting even the length of life that a sorceress can claim, and she wants to see Venezia. Apparently, she had once told Nieshka that her favorite grand-daughter had moved there and that magic popped up in her line now and again. It was possible that some of Alosha’s grandchildren still lived there, with the lifespan of magic-users. Nieshka was curious enough to be willing to go with them, in spite of her dislike of cities.

 

Venezia was a town of merchants. It reminded Kasia of some of the best and worst parts of Gidna but overlain with a sense of grandeur and mystery that Gidna had never successfully cultivated.

 

They do meet Alosha’s great-grandchildren and they are clever and skilled and intricately woven into the political dance of Venezia. Several are involved with the practice of glass making that is the city is famed for and they spin delicate spells of beauty and delight and luck into each artistic piece.

 

The four of them attend parties in elaborate masks and dresses. Nieshka practically hisses with distaste the first time Kasia drags her to a dress shop. She insists on using _Vanastelem_ instead. Kasia knows it is because with a magicked dress she doesn’t feel as guilty when she inevitably ruins it either during the course of the night or by wrestling it off at the end.

 

The water in Venezia actually feels worse to Kasia than any water she has been near in all of her travels, but she has learned to ignore small discomforts for the sake of indulging in small joys. The canals are beautiful and she loves riding through them in the small boats with the women she loves best at her side. And the Dragon scowling at the boatman from one corner.

 

A month after arriving, they wake up to find Nieshka gone. The unusual witch has managed, against all previous knowledge of magic and of her own skills, to accidently create a spell to take her back to the Forest. Happily, Nieshka also manages to repeat the spell that had helped them so long ago in Kralia and is able to speak with the Dragon across the vast difference and explain what happened. The magic has exhausted her enough that she can’t make it back to Venezia, so she informs Sarkan.

 

If Kasia hadn’t had that assurance of Nieshka’s whereabouts and wellbeing, she thinks the Golden Knight might have torn Venezia apart searching. They could leave now, she knows, and rejoin Nieshka in the familiar surroundings of the Wood. She always misses her when they are apart. Sarkan refuses to abandon an appointment he has made with an archivist in the city, but Kasia knows that he will likely not stay past that.

 

Standing in a workshop with the same feeling of warmth and purpose as Alosha’s forge, the Sword is examining a sword of folded steel. One of her great-great-great-great-grand-daughters is showing her the hilt, a fantastical creation of colored glass that has been enchanted never to break. Alosha’s iron-grey hair is tightly braided and her once ageless face is rough with experience and life.

 

Kasia knows that Nieshka is safe and happy in her forest. There is no need to rush back to her.

 Their paths will separate and join again and again and no matter what they will always be in each other’s hearts. She will enjoy the time she has, here and now, for what it is.


End file.
